One year into the Troubled Families programme, Louise Casey says that progress has been solid. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

The Troubled Families Programme is on track, despite the fact that over two thirds of families identified for the scheme have not yet been worked with, Louise Casey, director of the initiative, said.

Speaking during the communities and local government select committee on community budgets, she said: "I will be patient despite the fact I work with ministers. We just need to hold our nerve and give people time to work with these troubled families. There is no reason that just over 12 months into the programme we should expect anywhere other than where we are."

Casey's answer came in response to a question about whether she felt that having identified 118,082 troubled families, with 82,465 not yet been worked with and 116,407 still to be turned around, could be called an achievement.

She said: "We shouldn't underestimate the extraordinary achievement of local authorities. Local authorities deserve the credit for this because yes they are the ones, on the whole, driving this change."

"We are a year into a three year programme and I don't think that [the statistics are] bad for colleagues in local authorities. I would put the statistic much more positively. The fact they are working with 35,000 families from the starting point of where we were, in a three year programme, isn't bad at all."

Casey said that she would be patient to make sure local authorities get their "services organised, approaches right, leadership right" and get every child into school for three consecutive terms.

She added that while she wants things to move quickly, local authorities need to reform services around these families too.

A further £200m is going to be made available to help "high risk" families address challenges such as anti-social behaviour, and ministers say the current three year Troubled Families scheme is on track to help 120,000 families in England by 2015.

When asked whether £200m was a good enough amount to have got from the Treasury, Eric Pickles said that dealing with the Treasury was not easy and to get money they needed to show progress had been made. "I am pretty pleased with where we are. We are ahead of where I promised we would be," he said during the select committee.

The new funding for 2015-16 will be announced by the Treasury this Wednesday as part of the comprehensive spending round.